BORIS IN THE DRIVING SEAT — Has Boris Johnson used the furor over his future to soften his stance? Amid the noise and the fury over his Daily Telegraph article last week, two important concessions appear to have been overlooked. First, he accepts Britain will settle its accounts. He previously said Brussels could “go whistle.” Second, he said the U.K. could continue to pay into the EU budget during a transition.

— These positions allow Theresa May to negotiate a soft landing out of the EU en route to a hard Brexit outside the EU’s single market and customs union, which has long been government policy.

— Johnson was accused of back-seat driving by Home Secretary Amber Rudd. He appears to want less a change of direction and more the appearance that he is setting the destination.

IS €20 BILLION ENOUGH? Theresa May will use her Florence speech on Friday to offer to fill a post-Brexit EU budget hole of at least €20 billion, the first attempt by London to quantify its exit bill, according to the FT.

— The U.K. will hope the budget plan will help break the deadlock in negotiations, although as figures of up to €100 billion have been doing the rounds in the EU, the offer is unlikely to be enough.

— The EU is adamant that the talks must make “sufficient progress” on the U.K.’s post-Brexit financial obligations before they will move to the second phase of the talks on trade and the U.K.’s future relationship with the bloc.

** This is your free trial to Brexit Pro: We’re deepening our Brexit coverage as negotiations between the EU and U.K. intensify. As part of this investment, only Brexit Pro subscribers will have access to Brexit Files after September 22, along with additional Pro features like Pro Calendar, Pro Alerts, and exclusive conference calls with our journalists after each round of negotiations. Send us a note at pro@politico.eu to learn more. **

THEY SAID WHAT?

— Brexit is “being managed by people who would struggle to get their heads around a toddler’s Lego set.” — Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said at his party’s conference in Bournemouth on Tuesday that Brexit is a “product of a fraudulent and frivolous campaign led by two groups of silly public school boys reliving their dormitory fights,” with Theresa May the “headteacher barricaded in her office.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at U.N headquarters in New York | Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images

A message from AB InBev, the number one global beer company: “More than ever, people rely on label information. Delivering sufficient and comparable information regarding ingredients or calories should be an absolute priority for all of us in this industry” — Stuart MacFarlane, AB InBev’s president for Europe, on labeling. Discover the full interview here.

INSIGHT

In order to take back control, the City of London may have to give some up.

Giving more power to EU financial regulators to stick their noses into the operations of U.K. firms after Brexit might not seem an obvious by-product of Brexit. But in practice this could be the key to keeping more firms and jobs in London, rather than them moving to Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and elsewhere — as well as giving the U.K. more wiggle room to write their own rules.

Ironically, the basis for this dream outcome (from the U.K.’s point of view) is contained in a highly controversial European Commission proposal that a major central counterparty (CCP) clearing house in London might have to relocate to the EU. CCPs are entities that reduce the risk to the financial system from derivatives trades. They sit between the two counterparties and if one defaults, they step in. Relocating this financial market plumbing out of London could kick off an exodus of 35,000 to 40,000 jobs in the wholesale banking sector moving from the U.K. to the EU, according to an estimate from management consultants Oliver Wyman.

That might sound like bad news for post-Brexit U.K. but the proposal also says CCPs that are important to the EU economy would not have to move, as long as they are subject to much stricter oversight by the European Securities and Markets Authority. ESMA is now set to get similar enhanced supervisory powers over a broader range of firms. The European Commission released a proposal today on the roles of the European Supervisory Authorities, of which ESMA is one. In it, they propose entrusting ESAs with monitoring regulatory and supervisory developments and enforcement practices in third countries on an ongoing basis where the Commission has granted equivalence decisions, under which firms are allowed to offer services to EU entities.

This may be the tradeoff that is necessary for the City to guard against the nightmare scenario of losing serious numbers of jobs. Some estimates of job losses range as high as 83,000 to 100,000, meaning a severe hit to London (and the U.K.’s) economy.

This enhanced oversight does not give ESMA any enforcement rights, but it does allow it to have a much more hands-on approach to monitor non-EU financial firms, including for example with on-site inspections. The hope is that will give the EU the comfort it needs to continue to allow firms based in London to offer services to clients in the EU. Then there’s the added bonus that perhaps the EU would be in a position to ease up on strict transposition of EU rules, because they would be able to monitor the outcomes of U.K. regulation in real time.

So while a stronger role for ESMA might not feel like taking back control, it could be the price the City is willing to pay to maintain its position post-Brexit.

— 91 percent — The proportion of business leaders in London who believe the City remains a good or great base for businesses, despite Brexit-related risks, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry. Surveyed in July and August, 63 percent said they had no plans to move any part of their operations overseas.

— 36 percent — The proportion of U.K. citizens who said they had a positive image of the EU, according to a recent Eurobarometer survey.

INS AND OUTS

— Bermuda-based insurer XL Group is to move its main EU subsidiary from London to Dublin next year ahead of Brexit, the FT reported. XL already runs its European reinsurance business from Dublin. After the move, it will retain an insurance company and two Lloyd’s syndicates in London.

ELSEWHERE…

— President of the European Council Donald Tusk will meet British Prime Minister Theresa May in London on Tuesday to discuss Brexit. The meeting will come as the fourth round of Brexit talks gets underway in Brussels.

— The European Union is making a “car crash” hard Brexit more likely by failing to understand the British position and talking up the chances of a “European superstate,” Vince Cable, leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, told POLITICO in an interview. Jean-Claude Juncker’s State of the European Union speech “was dreadful … it directly feeds the narrative of the extreme Brexiteers, who will say: ‘If we stay in, we lose our sovereignty, we’re part of a federal European superstate.’”

—“Team France [is] playing ‘How much business can we get out of London,’” while the Germans seem to be “playing with their cards a bit closer to [their] chest” and are more open to talking about a dispute-resolution mechanism that doesn’t involve the European Court of Justice. That’s according to one expert speaking under Chatham House rules who attended the Eurofi Financial Forum ahead of the informal Economic and Financial Affairs Council meeting in Tallinn last week.

— Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, said today that it’s the U.K.’s responsibility to come up with a “unique solution” to the Irish border problem. “We all know this unique solution [to Northern Ireland] has to be proposed by the U.K. side, because the problem is a consequence of the decision of the U.K. to leave the European Union,” Verhofstadt told Irish broadcaster RTÉ during a two-day visit to both sides of the Irish border during which he will meet the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster.

— “Leaving the EU … [is] an unprecedented economic opportunity: even the European Commission predicts 90 percent of global growth over the next 20 years will be outside the EU,” International Trade Secretary Liam Fox writes in Brexit Central. He says his department will “renew our focus on supporting the outward investments of British companies.”

— Prime Minister Theresa May is in a mess and the EU must ensure it doesn’t compound the damage for both sides, according to Fabian Zuleeg, head of the European Policy Center.

— While the British government wants to discourage low-skilled and migrant workers from coming to the country, some migrant farm laborers from Eastern Europe appear detached from the Brexit tumult, and they’re less interested in integration than in making more money than they would at home, the FT reported.

— Former Prime Minister Tony Blair says he thinks there is a 30 percent chance that Brexit can be reversed. But he told Bloomberg that the economic hit from a hard Brexit might usher in “a Labour government frankly further to the left than any Labour government’s ever been.”

— The Bulgarians pulled out some Hollywood stars to promote the country as the ideal new home for the European Medicines Agency after Brexit, during their bid presentation on Tuesday. Salma Hayek, Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas were featured in a promotional video advertising what an amazing place Bulgaria is to shoot films. It seems the event organizers believe this means the country is the best place to host the EU drugs regulator as well.

BREXIT COUNTDOWN

There are 555 days until the U.K.’s formal exit from the European Union.